7 Early Vegetables to Grow for You and Your Flock

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Do you garden? Why not plant some veggies that have a bigger bang for their buck this year, especially for the chickens? Chickens love fresh treats from the vegetable garden. Many times they happily eat leaves, stems and roots. They also don’t mind bug chewed leaves that normally would find their way into the composter.Typically around this time, we start our seeds off indoors in seed trays. Once the seeds have germinated and are a few weeks old, we begin to “harden them off”. On warmer sunny days, we bring the trays full of seedlings outside to the picnic table, so that they can acclimate to outside temperatures. We bring them back indoors in the evening. We do this for about a week. After a week or so, we then plant them in the garden.

Soon enough, it’s harvest time. When sharing fresh vegetables with your flock, always be sure they have access to chicken grit and fresh drinking water. Also, if you have applied any garden chemicals, be sure to give them a good washing prior to sharing. Here are seven great plants that tolerate the chilly evenings of early spring, are easy to grow and perfect for you and the flock to enjoy.

Broccoli is an excellent source of folate, vitamin K, B vitamins, riboflavin, calcium, manganese, iron, magnesium, selenium, phosphorus, zinc, and some omega-3 fatty acids. After you harvest the blossoms, feed the leaves and stems to the chickens.

Lettuces

Mixed salad greens grow quickly and can be harvested sooner than most vegetables. They are rich in Vitamins A, B, and also full of antioxidants. The entire plant is edible. I always plant extra and toss the entire plant, roots and all, into the chicken run.

Kale is low in calories but packed with many vitamins and minerals including Vitamins A, K, C, B complex, iron, calcium, potassium, Vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids and folate. The entire plant is edible. Kale can grow the entire season and is simple to grow. You could even grow it in a container with mixed greens.

One of my chickens’ favorite treats are beet greens. These are packed with Potassium, Vitamins A, C, and iron. Did you know that the beet tops, including the leaves and stems, are absolutely delicious. If you’re not planning on eating them, share them with your flock!

Cauliflower
This vegetable is a relative to broccoli and chickens will not only eat the flowering white portion but also enjoy dining on the leaves and stems as well. Full of potassium, Vitamins A, D, B12, B6, C, iron and magnesium, the chickens get a healthy dose of nutrients.Swiss Chard
I love growing Swiss Chard and in the Northeast, it can grow like a weed. Once in the ground, our plants produce all season long until the first hard frost in fall. Swiss chard is rich in Vitamins A, K, C, E, B12, calcium, iron, folate and fiber.Carrots
To chickens, this entire plant is edible including the leafy greens. Carrots are a great boredom buster and keep the flock busy as it takes a bit of work to eat them. Carrots of course are known for beta-carotene, but they also are a great source of vitamins A, C, B6, and potassium, Try growing heirloom varieties that come in many gorgeous shades of yellow, orange, purples and pinks. Next time for a little fun, try tossing an entire carrot plant into the run as a treat.

Fresh vegetables are an excellent way to treat your chickens without feeling guilty. Whether you start a small garden in containers, built raised garden beds or till a large plot of land, chickens will happily work the soil and help with pest control. However, a word of caution, they are excellent, focused, and efficient workers. Therefore, be sure to supervise them in the garden, redirect their efforts as needed, and never leave them unattended. They can and will devour your entire garden in less time than you think.

About the author: Melissa Caughey is a backyard chicken keeper, beekeeper, gardener, and cook who pens the award winning blog, Tilly’s Nest. She lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her family of four and her Miniature Schnauzer. She regularly writes for HGTV Gardens, Community Chickens, Grit magazine, and contributes to Country Living Magazine. Her blog was recently named one of Better Homes and Gardens Top 10 Gardening Blogs. Melissa is currently working on a backyard chicken book with Storey Publishing to be released this upcoming year.

I love growing my own veggies. Broccoli is so yummy. I also grow peas,yellow beans(hubby’s favorite)Tomatoes, cherry@early girls.This year I’m trying zucchini,pumpkins, onions@carrots. My plot is small, but it works. I love the T-shirts. Hope I win. Good Luck to everyone!!

My babies love the broccoli blossoms, yet REFUSE to eat the stems and leaves, and want nothing to do with carrots 🙂They are quite spoiled, though, and get more tasty treats than I do haha!P.S. I love those shirts.

I like the mint green Rooster tee shirt that says Top of the Morning to You..Last June i got my first 6 chickens. We always put in a big garden with lettuces,swiss chard and everything that you posted above especially celery that we have been feeding our rabbits for years..My chickens loved the swiss chard and lettuces the best last year

I plant tomatoes, lettuce and pumpkins just for my chickens. Well, I plant them for the family but I plant extras just for the chickens. They just love all the greens. Oh yea, I love that t shirt, very cute.

I have allowed my peepers to graze in my winter garden, since all the crops have already bolted. I hope I don’t regret this since I planted a few tomatoes & zucchini plants in it today! I’d love to win any of these cute T shirts.

I love the Tees! I’m not a spring chicken but I like the shirt (navy)anyway. LOL I also like the Crazy Chicken Chick(long sleeve) . My favorite is the green “Farm Girl At Heart” with the brown chicken.

I really miss my girls. We lost them over the years to different things and now have none. We hope to get more soon though.

My chickens need to be fenced out of the garden but get random treats while I weed. They do get the run of the compost pile though and they truly appreciate that, an I like the work they save me having to turn it!

Looks like I’m just going to have to grow an extra garden just for the girls lol nope they are not spoiled at all – good to know they can eat the broccoli and cauliflower leaves and such – when I thin out the seedlings, if I don’t put them in a juicer to drink I throw them in the run for the girls to enjoy

I love the tee above and on the site the Spring Chicken tank, I Talk to Chickens hoodie, and Farm Chick bandana (which would be great for putting my hair up when I tend to the ‘ladies”) Would love to win this tee giveaway. Theres a lot of great stuff on the site for us chicken parents to buy. 🙂

I had my hens and 2 roosters a long while back. I am in hopes to have them again soon; very soon! I learned a new technique from a movie I recently watched with four of my grandchildren, “FLICKA 2”. That smart young lady took an umbrella out to that hen house and each time that feisty rooster took after her, she opened that umbrella giving him the “HAAA” signal!!! I giggled so hard! Would enjoy prancing around in that T~Shirt in my new hen house.

I am known among my friends as The Crazy Bird Lady. I have chickens, ducks, geese and guineas and honey bees around here. The weather has been so crazy we haven’t been able to start our Spring garden. I am thinking it is time to move to raised beds to be able to have what we want and to be able to share with the flocks. I enjoyed the post today. Would love to win that shirt! 🙂

Adorable t-shirt! Would be great to wear around town, as my neighbors think of me as the crazy chicken lady… Thanks for the gardening post, as I have broccoli,lettuce, and kale seedlings for our chicken/duck garden, but didn’t know about cauliflower & beets–looks like we need more seeds!

Mine also. This year is the first summer for the girls. They were too young last summer to let free roam. I have a feeling that I am going to have to fence off the garden! They LOVE anything green! Especially this time of year!!

Would love to win the shirt, we have 5 chickens, all were suppose to be hens, but guess what, 2 turned out to be roosters, so, we had to build another pen and coop as we don’t want chicks. Our girls are laying 2 to 3 eggs a day.

That’s my question too. I have two suggestions for the missing two plants. Brussels sprouts and French sorrel. I feed all the above but the beet greens to my “girls” (they turn their noses … er … beaks up at the beet greens). But their very favorites are the Brussels sprout leaves (they will leap up for these – now that my BS plants about about 5 feet tall), and French sorrel leaves. They also LOVE dandelions and wild mustards. When I go for my walks through the neighborhood or some of the nearby hills, I’m always “weeding” other peoples yards for those treats or foraging in the hills.